It had been less than six months since Blanche Wilcox Noyes earned her pilot’s license — becoming Ohio’s first aviatrix. Yet in August 1929, Noyes started her Travel Air biplane, Miss Cleveland, for the first-ever Women’s Air Derby from Santa Monica to Cleveland. 🛩️ When the Lakewood actress wasn’t performing at Gordon Square Theater, she was climbing clouds in her WACO 10 at Cleveland Municipal Airport. In 1930, Noyes piloted 90-year-old John D. Rockefeller on his first and only plane ride. She would become head of the Bureau of Air Commerce’s air-marking division and win the 1936 Bendix Trophy race with Louise Thaden. 🎭 🏆 The 1929 derby was brutal. Navigation by “dead reckoning” was only the start of Noyes’ problems when she inadvertently landed in Mexico. Flying to El Paso, a smoldering cigarette caught fire in the cabin near the engine. 🔥 Noyes sideslipped 2,000 feet and drifted to the earth, smacking into three-foot mesquite bushes. She ripped the extinguisher from its scre...